Kukla's Korner Hockey

SAN JOSE — The San Jose Sharks announced today that Game Six of the Western Conference Semifinals between the Sharks and Red Wings on Monday, April 7 is TBD at 6 or 7 p.m (Pacific). and will be broadcast on FSN-HD.
The exact start time is conditional to the New Jersey and Ottawa game on Saturday evening. Should New Jersey win on Saturday, there will be a Game Six between Ottawa and New Jersey on Monday. In this situation, the Sharks and Red Wings game will begin at 7 p.m. (Pacific).
Should Ottawa win the series on Saturday, the Sharks game on Monday will start at 6 p.m. (Pacific).

There has been talk about ways to shorten OT games—play four-on-four after a period; go to a shootout after two periods; flip hockey cards after three periods. It all seems like the same thing to me. OT is a tradition as glorious as the Stanley Cup itself. Yes, the NHL needs to find ways to market and to modernize, but changing overtime sounds too much like playing with the steak rather than the sizzle. Hey, it’s May. Anyone for steak?

VERSUS, the U.S. national cable television home of the NHL, garnered top ratings for Game 4 of the Buffalo Sabres-New York Rangers series on Tuesday, May 1 according to Nielson Media Research and VERSUS.
Among the highlights:

Things started reasonably well when she asked Lamoriello if he considered keeping both jobs next season. Lamoriello surprised the NHL world by firing head coach Claude Julien with just a few games left in the regular season and the Devils at the top of their division.
“No, last year I said it would never happen again and unfortunately I find myself here [again],” said Lamoriello, who has a well-deserved reputation for a late-season trigger finger. He last stepped in as coach in December, 2005 when Larry Robinson resigned for health reasons.

NEW YORK - To venerate its past, to celebrate its present and to anticipate its future, the National Hockey League has scheduled three major events in conjunction with the 2007 Stanley Cup Final:
The League will honor members of the 1955-60 Montreal Canadiens dynasty that won a record five consecutive Stanley Cups. Henri Richard, who played on 11 Stanley Cup champions, the most of any player, has confirmed his attendance. Other invited team members who played on all five champions: Jean Beliveau, Tom Johnson, Don Marshall, Dickie Moore and Jean-Guy Talbot.

What better place to find out how casual, normal fans think than a town called, uh, Normal? I walked up to every normal-looking guy I could find in Normal, Ill., and asked him a handful of questions about the post-lockout NHL. Questions like ...
What network are the playoffs on?
(The answer: Versus, primarily, and NBC.)
“It’s not a big network. I know that.”
“Um ... I don’t know, but I know it’s hard to find.”
And then one man, definitive in his response: “Fox News.” Pause. “I mean, Sports. Fox Sports.”
The result: The biggest vote-getter—nearly 20 percent—was ESPN. ABC, CBS, ESPN2, FOX Sports and TNT all drew guesses. Sixteen percent said either Versus, the Outdoor Life Network or “the network that used to be OLN.”

MOSCOW, May 4 (Reuters) - Russia is expected to reluctantly sign a new transfer agreement brokered by the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) and the NHL on Saturday, ending a two-year boycott that threatened to throw the sport into chaos.
Representatives of the NHL, NHL Players’ Association, the IIHF and the seven top European player-producing nations will meet at a downtown Moscow hotel to the hammer out the final details of a pact that will reportedly pay European clubs $200,000 for every player signed by an NHL team.
According to reports, the 30 NHL clubs will contribute $10-$12 million annually to a transfer pool that will be administered by the IIHF.